Home

Who
What
Where
When
Why
Killeshin Church
 

County

Laois

Coordinates

N 52° 50' 50.5"   W 007° 00' 05.4"

Nearest town

Carlow

Grid Ref.

S 67326 77811

Map No.

61

Elevation a.s.l. (m)

99

Date of visit

Friday 14 September 2012

GPS Accuracy (m)

3
Show Google Map              Show Monuments in the area

    
    
    
  
PREVIOUS      NEXT
A bearded face between two decorated stones in the arch of the doorway. I am quite sure it represents Diarmaid Mac Murchadha, the King of Leinster.


I've been dreaming of visiting this place for years, and at last we did it, we enjoyed the place and took our photos. When I was editing this webpage I found out that we already came here in the past, and exactly on June 4th, 2001. Though we were here before, we had no memory of that visit, we didn't remember the place or the landscape. For the third time this year we saw a place that we had already seen in the past and couldn't remember it. One of the aim of this website was to be a database for my own use, but it seems I failed...

In the 5th century St. Comghan founded an early monastery here, but the place was plundered and destroyed in 1077. The church that we see today was built in the 12th century, but the east section was added in the 15th century.
The church itself has nothing to offer apart from the magnificent four orders Romanesque west doorway made between 1150 e 1160 and considered as one of the finest in Ireland. The doorway is richly decorated with human and animal carvings, geometric patterns and celtic knots. The fact that the carvings are shallow suggests that the decorations were painted. Above the doorway is a triangular tympanum.
The chancel is aligned to east-northeast (75°).

On the doorway there's an inscription that commemorates the founder Diarmait Mac Murchadha, the king of Leinster that invited the Normans to Ireland in 1169.
To the southwest of the church was a round tower, but it was destroyed in 1703.


Browse by Monument Type
Browse by County
Browse by Date of Visit
Browse by Map Number

A-Z List

Clickable Counties
Clickable OS Maps Grid

Find a Map

Multimap

The days before GPS

The Stones in the Movies

Glossary
Links
Guestbook
FAQ

What's NEW?


Search


Site view counter: 21756849

Copyright © 1994-2024 Antonio D'Imperio
All the photos, the graphics and the texts on this website are automatically copyrighted to me under the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works 1886. Any violation of the copyright will be pursued according to the applicable laws.

info@irishstones.org

Powered by AxeCMS/CustomEngine(V0.25.00 build 999) by Sergio "Axeman" Lorenzetti. (C) 2009-2015

counter